


Sleuths

by minteafresha



Category: Homestar Runner
Genre: But i'm pretty sure people can handle one f-word, Gen, there's one F-word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24796444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minteafresha/pseuds/minteafresha
Summary: The Brothers Strong look for an old stuffed toy that Strong Mad lost in the woods.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	Sleuths

It was way past bedtime.

A quarter past midnight, Strong Mad trudged through the dark with heavy feet and even heavier spirits. He swept a flashlight around, aimlessly. “Robbie… Robbie…” he called out in the dark, voice wearing thin and hoarse.

Silence. Then- something called back. Robbie?

Someone, faintly... “Where are you, bro?”

Robbie wasn’t his brother! Strong Mad clicked the flashlight off. He turned around. Three figures approached him, one of them holding a flashlight of their own. Strong Mad held his hand to his face. The figures stopped in front of him.

“There you are,” the one holding the flashlight said. He had a soft voice, full of sorrow but relief for finding his brother.

“Tristeza…” Strong Mad said. His brothers were here.

“Yeah, it’s us,” Strong Sad said. The Cheat stumbled forward, taking a sip from a coke can. Strong Mad gathered the ball of yellow in his arms.

“Why’re you out here?” Strong Bad said. “Sleepwalking?”

Strong Mad hugged the Cheat. “Robbie is lost.”

“Who the fuck is Robbie?” Strong Bad said. The Cheat tried to offer Strong Mad their drink, but Strong Mad didn’t seem to notice.

Strong Sad shone the light in Strong Bad’s face. “Don’t you remember-”

Strong Bad batted the flashlight from his baby brother’s hands. “Yah!”

Strong Sad stared down at the light. “Don’t you remember that was Strong Mad’s old stuffed doll?”

“You weren’t even born yet!” Strong Bad said, fishing up the flashlight and attempting to blind Strong Sad. Strong Sad closed his eyes as he spoke.

“Well he still talks about it.” Strong Sad flailed his arms to make Strong Bad lower the light.

“Okay so,” Strong Bad turned, “What did it look like, Mabb?”

“This big.” Strong Mad indicated with his hands about three feet wide. His flashlight and the Cheat fell, and the Cheat yelped. The coke spilled on the packed dirt.

“Walk it off, kid,” Strong Bad grunted. The Cheat growled. “I guess after all this time, Robbie would be all messed up and sun-bleached and who knows what else.”

Strong Sad said, “Ah, now I have a real reason to be traipsing through the woods during witching hour.” He wasn’t smiling.

“Ew.”

The four Brothers Strong walked through the forest together, with Strong Mad at the front, scanning ahead of the party. Strong Bad searched the sides. The place began to look eerily familiar. The world was shrouded in shadow, and the two beams of manmade light did not offer much clarity. Familiar forms emerged. A stump that was a miniature stage or pedestal. A tree that looks like a person crying. It felt like not much time passed because the shape of these trees had not changed much within twenty years. Had it really been that long? Strong Sad was out of school and had an IT job. Time dawned on Strong Bad…

And the night seemed to continue on and on without any ray of hope.

Strong Sad wandered off to the side. He knocked over a pile of tires. Strong Bad jumped and turned at the sound. The younger brother squinted back. “This is the old obstacle course.”

“I… think so?” Strong Bad said, lowering his shoulders. 

Stray shards of crushed plastic Easter eggs… Trading cards from an outdated fantasy card game… Paperclips that have been bent or straightened...

The Cheat kicked up some of the litter and chittered. Strong Bad said, “Well, _we_ did this.” The Cheat made a curious noise. Strong Bad said, “Yeah, we used to play here.”

The Cheat found what looked like a mangled bike, half submerged in the ground. He tried to spin the wheel, but it was rusted solid.

Strong Bad guided the Cheat with his knee to keep looking elsewhere. 

Strong Sad continued apart from the rest of them. Then, he shouted in surprise. Strong Bad ran to him, and Strong Mad and the Cheat followed.

“Robbie?!” Strong Mad said.

Horror dripped from Strong Sad’s voice. “Something was here…… tonight!” He held up to the light… a bag of Blubbo’s take-out.

“Oh great, I’m starving!” Strong Bad reached for the bag. The Cheat jumped up and grabbed the bag and they tugged it around before they broke it. “Five second rule!” Strong Bad moved to snatch up the fries. The Cheat beat him to it and started gulping them down like a seagull. “Well, they were gross anyway.”

The Cheat made a satisfied noise and rubbed his belly. Strong Sad rolled his eyes and said, “Those fries are edible only because they’ve been recently cooked and brought out here. Someone was here!”

“Yeah, us. Strong Mad, you bought burgers for the rest of us, right? Fess up.”

Strong Mad shook his head. “Floor fries, floor fries!”

“Okay, I know you’re lying.” Strong Bad tried to do a pat down on Strong Mad.

Strong Sad raised his voice over the arguing. “Let’s just look for Robbie, okay?”

“Hey, I call the shots,” Strong Bad said. “Strong Mad. What do we do?”

“ROBBIE!” Strong Mad sauntered off. They followed him.

As they walked on, the Cheat grew very sleepy. Strong Mad carried them.

A chill went through the trees and the brothers shivered. The Cheat stayed warm in Mad’s arms. The other two brothers looked at each other. 

The wind rushed suddenly through the trees, causing a few perched owls to shoot up into the air and the branches to rattle. The momentum of it caused the brothers to look up at the sky. The night was a stasis between summer and winter, yesterday and tomorrow. Where had it all gone?

A thick fog pressed down on them while they weren’t looking, which was only for a moment. Strong Sad’s voice shook. “Wh-what was that?”

“You tell me!” Strong Bad searched with no luck with his flashlight. The fog was a white sheet. Strong Bad turned back, and Strong Sad’s pale face looked haggard in the light pointed up at his chin.

There was a booming _THUD_ which resounded through the forest. The Brothers Strong screamed; the littlest one stayed fast asleep. Before their eyes, a giant trunk of a foot landed down through the fog, 30 feet away. 

It approached… A monster with the body of accumulated garbage and soggy cardboard and deflated dodgeballs and… feathers? One of the feathers floated toward the brothers.

Strong Sad picked it up, put it up to his face, and sniffed it. 

Strong Mad and Bad looked at him, eyes wide. Strong Sad squinted at the feather in the darkness. Then, he tossed it aside. “Guys, there’s a 10 foot tall trash monster aboutta pummel us!”

They scattered. Strong Mad shouted, “Where! Where!” He looked like he was going to squeeze the Cheat’s brains out. The Cheat finally woke up. He squirmed and leapt out of Strong Mad’s hold. The Cheat ducked under a fallen tree, and one little paw stuck out. The monster began to move slowly toward the Cheat. Strong Mad tried to punch and kick the monster, but the most he did was dent it. 

Strong Sad ran and hid behind a tree while Strong Bad kept running, swinging his light around, and yelling. Strong Sad saw the trash monster turning toward the log. In Strong Mad’s light, Strong Sad could see a faded purple pillowcase sticking out of its chest. There was something so familiar, like everything else in this childmade scrapyard. But something about it…

Strong Sad yelled over, “Strong Mad! What shape is Robbie?”

Strong Mad was trying to get the Cheat out from under the log. “Like me!”

So, squarish?

Strong Sad hoped he wasn’t attracting attention from the monster. He tried again. “And what color is Robbie?”

Strong Mad remained crouching by the log, not moving. Color identification was already hard, let alone color recollection.

“Strong Mad?”

Strong Bad screamed, “I’m the one you want, forest spirit! The others are ugly! I’m a better sacrifice!”

Strong Mad popped up. “Purple!”

Purple!

“Strong Bad, stop!” Strong Sad charged out, glancing to find the monster as he did so. It was about to wrap its hands around the log that the Cheat was under. Strong Mad was backing away in fear. Strong Sad stopped running. “The Cheat! Strong Mad, grab the Cheat and run!”

It was too late- the monster had lifted the fallen tree like it was a water bottle and threw it over its shoulder. The tree landed on its roots. Strong Bad cheered.

“No!” Strong Sad was still frozen in his tracks.

The monster grabbed the Cheat. It was going to put the Cheat in the deep crevice of its heart along with the purple pillow.

Strong Sad said, “I think the monster likes cuddly things. Like Robbie and the Cheat.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the Cheat said, embarrassed, and then they went right back to screaming and biting the monster’s claw.

“Nevermind that!” Strong Bad ran and jumped on the monster’s PVC pipe arms, dropping his flashlight. “Give us back the Cheat, mudgeslide! Hiya!” He began battering at the monster’s head, which was less of a head and more like a milk crate being held on with mud.

“Why don’t you listen to me?” Strong Sad ran up to them and picked up the flashlight. “I’m telling you-”

“I’m just- I’m just-!” Strong Bad slowed in his futile punches. “I’m just scared, man!” He stopped punching and slid off the monster. He dropped into the dirt and Strong Sad helped him up. The Cheat started getting sucked into the monster’s chest like quicksand. They could not bite anymore because they would get a mouthful of toxic sludge.

Strong Bad breathed heavily and held back sobs. “I don’t know what’s happening. The Cheat…!”

They were very lucky that the monster was ignoring them. The rest of the brothers didn’t seem to be as cuddly and cute enough to be added to its mass. It was walking away, and that was not so lucky. Strong Sad and Bad still stood there.

Strong Bad rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Look, all I know is we gotta get the Cheat back.”

“Me too, Strong Bad,” Strong Sad said. “But we can’t just attack the monster.”

“But that’s what I do,” Strong Bad said, punching his glove hands together, making a soft sound. “I’m a force-a nature!”

“Yeah, you are.” Strong Sad looked around at all the trash that the monster didn’t care to take. The fog was gone, and every memory felt so close and clear. “Do you remember…?”

“Remember what?” Strong Bad looked around too.

Strong Mad, over by the small pit made by the fallen tree, swept his hands over the ground. “Don’t look. Stars!”

Strong Sad dug far into his mind… “Don’t look at the stars.”

Strong Bad was confused, but he said nothing.

Strong Sad closed his eyes and continued, slowly, some of it in song and some it recitation (yes like a Broadway musical):

“Don’t look at the stars.

Stay here on the ground.

I’ll keep my sweet peas

Here, safe, and sound.

Do you remember that?” Strong Sad pointed the flashlight at Strong Bad’s face. He didn’t seem to mind the light in his eyes. He was remembering. Strong Bad sang,

“If you ever stray

Far away from this place

Know that you can sleep

In this warm embrace.”

It was a lullaby that their mother had once sung to them. Strong Sad was two or three, the whole family was in the bathroom (or course the Cheat wasn’t there yet). What made the memory so vivid for Strong Sad was that Strong Bad had drawn on Sad’s face in red marker to try to make him look less sick. Their mother washed his face thoroughly and the soap smell really stuck with him. She sang to distract the kids.

Back in the present, the three brothers stood together, singing the song. Strong Bad’s deep voice balanced well with the others. Strong Mad struggled to get the words right, but the others made sure to follow his lead the best they could.

Then, they heard a little high pitched humming. They looked down and found… The Cheat! Covered in dirt and styrofoam, but… alive!

“The Cheat!” they all cried, and the three of them moved to pick up the Cheat together. Strong Mad ultimately was the one to pick them up. 

“Cuddly!” Strong Mad said.

“Aha!” the Cheat said, brandishing Robbie the purple pillow.

“Double cuddly!” Strong Mad said, happily holding his two feathery snuggle buddies.

Strong Bad blurted, “But, the Cheat, what about the monster! Did you use your super electricity powers I knew you always had? And exploded the metal fragments of the monster inside out?”

The Cheat went, ‘Nh-nuh!”

“Then…?”

“Don’t you get it?” Strong Sad said. “We sang the lullaby! The monster likes cute things, and things nostalgic to us, so we sang the song and it soothed the beast.”

“Nh-hnn!!” The Cheat nodded.

“Uh, no,” Strong Bad said. “Monsters don’t just disintegrate like that, the Cheat. And Strong Sad.”

Strong Sad sighed.

“I probably… just weakened it with my fierce moves, you know. So we could prepare the final blow of familial love.” Strong Bad folded his arms and sniffed. “Yeah.”

“So you agree?” Strong Sad said.

“Strong Bad hooray!” Strong Mad said. “Strong Bad the hero!”

“Hell yes,” Strong Bad said, holding his hand up. Strong Mad high fived him, and Strong Bad winced in pain. “Oooookay, man, it’s way past your bedtime.”

Strong Sad yawned. “Hoo, me too. After all that, I’m gonna have to sleep in for a couple days. Maybe weeks.”

They all walked together as the Cheat fell asleep in Strong Mad’s arms again. Strong Bad scratched the Cheat’s head and smiled. He looked at Strong Sad, who was almost falling asleep himself. Strong Bad nudged Strong Mad and pointed his thumb at Sad. Strong Mad lifted Strong Sad on his back and soon he was carrying two sleeping people.

“Sweet dreams, little bro,” Strong Bad said, carrying both their flashlights.


End file.
